


Piano Forte

by telperion_15



Category: Primeval
Genre: Classical Music, Community: smallfandomfest, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Piano, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telperion_15/pseuds/telperion_15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick teaches Lester to play the piano.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piano Forte

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the smallfandomfest prompt 'Nick/Lester, piano'.

  
A series of somewhat discordant notes drew Nick’s attention away from his newspaper, and he looked up to see Lester sitting at the piano in the corner of the room, his fingers resting on the black and white ivory of the keys.  
  
“Do you play?” Nick asked, aware that there was still a lot about the personal side of Lester he didn’t know.  
  
Lester gave him a slightly incredulous look in return. “Have you ever seen a piano in my flat?”  
  
“That doesn’t mean you don’t play.”  
  
“Well, in this instance, it unfortunately does.” Lester hesitated, and then sighed minutely. “Not through lack of trying from my mother, though. I was forced to take lessons when I was young, and like all boys, rebelled against the idea of enjoying anything my parents insisted on.” He sighed again. “And by the time I realised it might actually be something worth learning, I was too busy with work and family to find the time.”  
  
“That’s a shame,” Nick observed. “I can’t say I find the time to play much any more, but when I do I find it very soothing, very relaxing. And god knows we all need some relaxation in our line of work.”  
  
Lester smiled thinly, and then hesitantly depressed a couple of piano’s keys again. The notes hovered cleanly in the quiet of Nick’s living room – despite his lack of time to use it, he always made sure the instrument was tuned. It was always ready, that way.  
  
Noting something in the expression on Lester’s face, Nick folded up his newspaper and set it aside, and then stood up and moved across the room, settling beside the other man on the piano stool.  
  
“Perhaps…well, maybe I could teach you. If you like?” he offered quietly, unsure of his reception. “I’m no concert pianist, but I could probably manage the basics.”  
  
There was a moment of uncertain silence, and then Lester shrugged. “Oh, all right then,” he acquiesced. “Let’s give it a go. Although I should probably warn you that I’ll likely be a terrible pupil,” he added wryly.  
  
Nick chuckled. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Actually, I think I’d be suspicious if you were a model student. I’d wonder what you’d done with the real James Lester!”  
  
Lester rolled his eyes, and then shifted around until he was properly facing the piano, his side pressed against Nick’s as they sat close together on the piano stool.  
  
“Right, let’s start with a basic scale, shall we? Get you used to the keys and the sound.” Nick laid his own fingers on the keyboard and played a smooth C-scale, a pure ascendancy of sound. “Okay, now you try.”  
  
In a slightly hesitant manner, Lester repeated the action himself, with a couple of stumbles as his fingers didn’t flow quite as easily over the keys as Nick’s had.  
  
“Good. Now, I’ll play something very simple, just so you can see how the left and right hands work in tandem. You won’t be able to manage that straight away, but it’ll give you something to aspire to.”  
  
*   *   *   *   *  
  
Lester hadn’t been lying when he’d said he was likely to be a bad student. The first afternoon’s lesson had gone easily enough, but as Nick started to increase the complexity of what he was teaching, Lester’s frustrations at not being able to pick the skill as quickly as he thought he should be able to soon became apparent. He was a man used to getting his way, to being in charge, and to being good at the skills necessary to his career. To find that he wasn’t automatically expert at something rankled, and there had been several incidents of raised voices, and petulant decisions to give up, “this silly, useless activity.” It always amused Nick to see his normally calm and unruffled lover throw a tantrum, but he always smothered his smiles, and simply waited for the other man to return to the lessons.  
  
And return he always did. Because if he was frustrated that he wasn’t learning quickly enough, he was also determined that he _would_ learn eventually. Lester didn’t let the little things like playing the piano defeat him.  
  
And Nick admired his determination, even if he would never tell Lester that, and so put up with the irritation, the tantrums, and the sulks, and continued to teach his wayward student.  
  
It was all worth it, anyway, to see the look on Lester’s face when he _did_ eventually master something – a new technique, or a new melody. Lester obviously took pleasure in the music he was creating, and Nick knew that what he had originally said about playing being relaxing was finally beginning to dawn on Lester as well.  
  
*   *   *   *   *  
  
One evening, sometime later, Nick let himself in to his house, the front door closing quietly behind him as he tried not to fall asleep right there on the threshold.  
  
It had been an exhausting day. Two difficult anomalies, miles apart, resulting in lots of running around, some nifty PR work by Jenny, and two raptor corpses when Becker and his men had had no other option but to shoot the marauding creatures.  
  
Preliminary examinations of the remains had lengthened the day further, and Nick had found himself in the unusual position of leaving the ARC _after_ Lester for once, with nothing more than a muttered, “See you later,” passing between them before Lester departed and left Nick to his work.  
  
It had taken Abby shooing him out of the lab before he’d finally given in to the demands of his body and followed his lover home, wondering all the way whether he wasn’t going to end up running his truck into a ditch in his weariness.  
  
But he’d made it in one piece, although the walk from the truck to his front door had felt like miles, and now even summoning up the energy to remove his jacket seemed like a Herculean task.  
  
But as he stood, just inside his front door, swaying tiredly and resisting the impulse to steady himself against the wall, Nick suddenly became aware of the muted strains of music floating through the house. Listening carefully, he realised it was Beethoven’s _Moonlight Sonata_ , one of his favourite pieces of music, and he smiled a little, approving Lester’s ambitions even as he wondered where the man had managed to dig up the CD from.  
  
But when he pushed open the living room door gently, having finally divested himself of his coat and shuffled down the hall, he received a surprise. With the door now opened, it immediately became apparent that this was no recorded music he was hearing.  
  
Peering into the room, he realised that Lester was seated at the piano, head bent in concentration as his fingers moved deftly over the keys, eliciting the beautiful, almost melancholy melody that filled the room.  
  
He was flabbergasted. Nick had known the other man had been practicing ferociously in his desire to attain proficiency, but he’d had no idea that Lester had been practicing _this_ much. He was good. _Very_ good. Nick smiled ruefully to himself as he realised that in all probability the pupil had now outstripped the master.  
  
He continued to watch, silently, from the door as Lester played the piece through to completion, a little of his tiredness slipping away as the music revitalised him. And when the last few notes of the sonata faded into the air, he remained still, unsure what to say, how to offer his congratulations.  
  
But he must had made some kind of noise, because Lester turned suddenly on the piano stool, his face registering first surprise, and then something that might almost have been embarrassment as he realised his wasn’t alone.  
  
“Ah, I didn’t realise you were home.”  
  
“I could tell,” Nick replied. “You seemed very…absorbed.” He moved away from the door, and went to stand beside Lester, resting a hand on his lover’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “That was beautiful,” he said sincerely.  
  
“It was adequate,” Lester demurred.  
  
“It was more than that.” Nick’s eyes strayed to the music propped up on the piano’s stand. He recognised the score sheet.  
  
Lester’s gaze had followed Nick’s. “I found it in the piano stool,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind. It seemed as good piece as any to practice on.”  
  
“It’s one of my favourites,” Nick told him. “And I don’t mind at all. It really was beautiful,” he said again. “I didn’t realise you’d got this good.”  
  
“Well, I had a good teacher,” Lester said generously.  
  
Nick flushed slightly, and then grinned down at Lester. “I think you might be my greatest achievement! But then again, a lot of star pupils are also difficult ones…”  
  
Lester snorted, but didn’t argue the point – they both knew the statement to be true. Nick squeezed his shoulder again, and then stepped back a little.  
  
“Will you play it again? For me?”  
  
“I don’t know if I can now that I know I have an audience,” Lester said, with an uncharacteristic display of bashfulness.  
  
“Yes, you can,” Nick insisted. “Please?”  
  
Lester sighed long-sufferingly, but as Nick sat down in an armchair his hands went back to the piano, and after a moment’s hesitation, Beethoven’s music filled the room once more.


End file.
